The Iron County Commission is pressing pause on any new data centers and large energy projects in the county for the next six months, as public outcry over such projects across Utah has continued to intensify.

The commission on Tuesday unanimously approved a temporary land use regulation that prohibits the acceptance or processing of new and incomplete applications for data centers, data center power plants and utility-scale solar projects over the next 180 days. In that time, the county plans to review and update current policies to protect the area’s “rural character,” Iron County Planner Brett Hamilton said during the meeting.

“The goal ultimately [is] clear, balanced and sustainable development standards,” Hamilton added.

The Iron County Planning Commission is reviewing conditional use permit applications for two data center projects, according to the county’s planning website.

The application for the proposed 640-acre Antelope Data Center and natural gas power plant has been deemed complete and will not be paused by the new ordinance, Hamilton said. The planning commission will vote on the permit application on June 4, he added.

The application for the 2,564-acre Red Butte Data Center and natural gas plant is still incomplete, though, and Hamilton said the proposal “would be put on hold with this ordinance.”

During the pause, the county may adopt new standards to protect rural land uses, the environment and the area’s limited infrastructure capacities, Hamilton said.

Data centers and and associated power plants are allowed on the majority of land in the county under the current zoning rules. That “opens a really wide door for projects to potentially come in and propose a conditional use permit,” Hamilton said.

To prevent dozens of projects from being built across its rural areas, Hamilton added, the county could create a zoning rule that would shrink the land available for such projects.

Southwest Utah residents have repeatedly spoken out about water, energy, heat effects and noise associated with these projects, including during a nearly four-hour open house for the Red Butte project on May 14.

“I’ve literally received dozens and dozens of calls, emails, 24 hours a day,” Commissioner Mike Bleak said during the meeting. “It started this morning at 5 a.m.”

He can’t keep up with it, he added, and doesn’t expect it to slow down.

“I think this is a step in the right direction to figure out what we need to do to make sure that Iron County is protected, number one, and if there’s benefit moving forward, then we need to make sure that we capitalize on that benefit so that it helps each member of our community,” Bleak said about the ordinance passed Tuesday.

Protests and outcry over data centers have spread across the state in recent weeks after the approval of the hyperscale Stratos data center in Box Elder County. Utah’s Military Installation Development Authority approved the project backed by celebrity investor Kevin O’Leary in April, and the Box Elder County Commission voted unanimously to allow MIDA to create the project area.

Bleak, who is the commission’s liaison with the building and planning departments, said the data center applications are “brand new” for the county.

“We need to figure out what’s going on, we need to put the brakes on the whole thing a little bit, and we need to make sure that we’ve got things right up front by ordinance that are very strong,” he said.

The commissioners also said there is a need for data centers.

“Every single time we use an electronic device, we are demanding data on the open market. ... So we need to turn down the temperature a little bit, and realize that we are all using AI, we are all using data centers,” Commissioner Ken Robinson said.

The planning commission, he added, is “asking the questions that need to be asked and doing the things that need to be done to move this forward.”

Support for the pause

Several people spoke in favor of the data center pause during the commission meeting on Tuesday.

“Thank you, commissioners, for what you’ve done and are doing,” said Iron County resident Bob Ballou.

“Sometimes I wonder if these organizations, these companies, take a big Google map, and they look for an open space, throw a dart, and say, ‘There,’ and they don’t think about ramifications like water,” he continued.

Both the Antelope and Red Butte data center projects would use water from areas with groundwater management plans regulated by the Utah Division of Water Rights. Depletions from the aquifers in Iron County have exceeded recharge, according to the division, and the division is cutting back water rights to balance groundwater supplies.

“Water rights are not water,” Ballou said.

Jessica Berri, a Cedar City resident and teacher aide at North Elementary, echoed Ballou’s concerns and said it didn’t make sense to build a data center when much of the state is in extreme drought.

Utah Gov. Spencer Cox declared a state of emergency due to the drought last week.

“I am really concerned about the future that we are leaving behind for our children if we don’t think twice about these massive pollution-causing, water-taking projects,” Berri said.

Others voiced concerns about power usage, pollution and the effect on taxpayers in Iron County. Some also dove into the debates around artificial intelligence and the need for more data centers.

“I’ve been using the internet for 30 years,” said Nichole Phillips, a Cedar City resident. “We have not needed large scale data centers like this up until now. This is a recent development, and that should be part of the critical thinking.”

Correction • May 26, 2026 3:00 p.m.: A previous version of the story misspelled Jessica Berri’s last name as Barry.